Year: 2009

Primera Technology (http://www.primera.com), a
manufacturer of specialty printers, announced its
BravoPro Xi-Series Disc Publishers. They’re new
and improved versions of Primera’s BravoPro Disc
Publishers. They’re compatible with Mac OS X 10.5
(“Leopard”) and higher.

According to the folks at Primera, features of
the Xi-Series include: 300% faster robotics for
higher throughput; an interior blue LED lighting
with job status feedback; a seventh-generation
disc picking mechanism; optional Blu-ray Disc
recordable drives; and lower prices.

iPresentee (http://www.ipresentee.com), a developer of add-ons for
Apple’s iWork and iLife applications, has released Keynote Themes
8.0, a collection of themes to be used with Keynote. Keynote is
Apple’s presentation component of the US$79 iWork suite.

Keynote Themes 8.0 includes six new themes: Brilliance, Shining
Waves, DNA Chain, Space Drops and Live Mosaic. The new Keynote Themes
collection offers a variety of presentation styles with coordinated
fonts, colors, backgrounds, bullets and picture frames. Each theme is
available in standard or HD formats.

SmileOnMyMac has updated PDFPen
(http://www.smileonmymac.com/PDFpen/download.html), its PDF editing
and form-filling tool for Mac OS X, to version 4.5.2. The update
reduces memory usage for OCR documents and includes various bug fixes
and improvements.

PDFpen costs US$49.95, and PDFpenPro is $99.95. Family pack licenses,
which cover up to five computers in one household, are $74.95 for
PDFpen and $129.95 for PDFpenPro. Upgrades from earlier versions of
either application are $25, and free to users who purchased after
June 1, 2008.

Native Instruments (http://www.native-instruments.com) has released
Maschine 1.1, an update of its next-generation groove production
studio for beat creation and arrangement. The system combines a
software sequencer and sampler with an integrated performance
controller. Maschine is built on a combination of groove box and drum
machine workflows.

To allow producers to incorporate external gear into their Maschine
projects, the new version adds MIDI I/O functionality.

Noise Industries, developer of visual effects tools for the
postproduction and broadcast markets, has released an update to its
freebie generator plug-in, Pan and Zoom
(http://www.noiseindustries.com/fxfactory/panandzoom).